Metaphor
by Lady Gallagher
Summary: Oneshot. Puck and Rachel in college. Freely inspired by... well... a lot of things.


Puck tries to calm his nerves as he heads to her dorm. He wasn't doing anything wrong at all, but his hands are sweating a little. He tries to shove away the nervous feelings because he's a badass who gets laid anytime he wants. Except every time he thinks he's got this girl figured out she goes and does something crazy that either pisses him off or turns him on. He really hopes it's option two today because he didn't wet his dick since they'd been with each other last week. A fucking long time.

They're not dating. They're not. She can fuck whoever she wants and so can he. They only went to a frat party about a week ago and the mix of alcohol, him singing a Springsteen song and a really short skirt got them together in bed after the two excruciatingly long minutes that took for them to cross campus and get to his dorm.

So now he wants more of that. Like, really needs it in a way that he can't even understand. He has his rebound girls around campus, the sort of thing that only requires a phone call and bang! He's right on top of them. But final exams were really wearing him out and he didn't really bother to look for those girls. Instead, he is standing in front of Rachel Berry's dorm, staring at the door like it is an enigma to him.

The door opens. He faces a tall, blonde girl who looks at him a little confused.

"Hey", he says. Rachel's roommate leans forward and looks at both sides of the hall, seeing it empty.

"Are you here to mess with us?" she asks him, pissed. "Are your gorillas hiding somewhere?"

"What? No." he tells her, shaking his head.

"Then what do you want?" she asks him, skeptical.

Okay, so maybe he deserved that. He was the ass who slushed and wedged freshman boys and coordinated massive pranks. Somehow he managed to be some sort of leader of the jocks and the rich boys, even tough he wasn't either of them. It all started with a short film he was shooting for an AV class about acceptance and popularity and somehow he ended up interviewing the quarterback of the college's football team, the most popular and desired boy in Julliard. The boy had it all, money, girls all over him and somehow (Puck still couldn't quite understand) he started sobbing in front of the camera. Then he got caught in a beautiful, touching speech about how being popular and rich didn't keep him from struggling with all the issues other people did. Puck remained quiet most of the time. Then the boy stared at Puck like he was some kind of hero and hugged him. Two hours after he shot the interview it seemed like the whole university knew about the short film. Two hours and fourteen minutes later his AV teacher asked him to take a look at the scenes he had so far. One week later he was in the middle of a crowded movie theater showing his movie to the whole university, including the president and some Hollywood producers. That had been two years ago.

So, yeah. Chicks dig him.

"Is Rachel in?" he asks the girl in a low voice.

She glares at him for a second. "You're here for Rachel?"

"Yes."

"You're actually here to see her, even after what you did last week, " she says, eyebrows creased.

"Are you gonna let me in?" he demands, a little pissed now.

She smiles a little. "Sure." She gestures to the room where Rachel is studying and steps outside the room. "I'll go to the library. You guys behave."

He watches her as she walks away and then he gets inside the room. The place looks extremely neat, just like he has always seen it. Rachel's door room has a huge gold star painted on it. He smiles.

Rachel and Puck had known each other since they were six. They went to kindergarten and elementary school together in Ohio. Puck left town after his parents died, heading to New York. He was ten. His sister was sent to San Francisco. She was six. Rachel stayed in Ohio, where she went to high school and then made her big plans to become a Broadway star. She got into Drama's Division in Julliard, which was something she had always dreamed of.

And, somehow, two years ago she was invited to this movie premiere in the college's movie theater to watch a freshman's short film that everybody was talking about. She got late in the movie theater, but her friend had saved a really good seat and she climbed people's legs in order to get there. She loved the film and after it had ended, a teacher had called the author to answer people's questions in the auditorium. She still doesn't know what she felt when she saw Noah Puckerman walking on stage and getting the audience's applause, smiling and seeming uncomfortable. And when she asked him a question about how much of the film was autobiographic, the smile he gave her and the silence that elapsed until he answered her shoudn't have given her butterflies in the stomach.

So after that they had become sort of friends, hanging out and doing stuff together with hers or his gang. Puck would try to explain to her why he had left Ohio and she would be pissed at him for even trying. Because there's no way she could even begin to understand why he would leave the town he had been born before she did. And then one day he had mumbled "I wanted to make something out of myself and you wanted to make everything out of yourself. Guess that's the difference between us, Rach", and that had settled that matter. She kissed him for the first time that night. They slept on the same bed, her head on his bare chest, his hands on her hair. When he woke up the next morning she was gone from his room. She avoided him the whole week and that had led to a fight about what the hell she wanted from him, and when she shouted "I was needy, okay, and you listen to me talking about my issues and my pain without judging me, Noah; don't try to make this bigger than it actually was" he stormed out of the cafeteria. They didn't speak for three months.

That had been three months ago. She'd managed to charm him into forgiving her by getting drunk in a party she'd had no interest in going last week. She got more eloquent when she was tipsy anyway. By the sixth shot of tequila she'd thought it was about time to stop that nonsense and had gone to talk to him. He'd had a small group of girls listening to him sing Thunder Road. She hadn't been thinking straight when she pounced on him to show all those skanks which girl could get him without a second's hesitation.

So by the morning she felt the other side of the bed empty. If that feeling was the way he had felt when she disappeared in the morning after they'd slept together for the first time, then she thought her apologies weren't nearly enough. And he hadn't spoken to her in days now.

Rachel hears a knock on her door. She turns her head away from the books on the table and her heart skips a beat when she sees Noah peeking into her room, smiling.

"Hey." She greets him, and right now all she's feeling is relief. "Come in."

He does, dropping on her bed unceremoniously. "Liked what you did with the door." He says, pointing at it.

She doesn't look away from the books. "Yeah, gold stars are kind of my thing."

Puck smiles at her. "Have been for a while now. You'd sign your name on this little notebook of yours and then you'd draw this star beside it when we were in second grade."

She smiles into her literature book. "It's a metaphor, you know. I figured it out in high school, why I've been so obsessed with stars. Gold stars are a metaphor for me being a star."

Germans had probably invented a word to describe what he is feeling right now. It is one of the things she pulls out that makes him feel like a pussy towards her. He laughs, trying to brush it off, and then watches her.

She can feel the weight of his eyes on her and that doesn't help her concentration. "Want to quiz me? You had this class last semester!"

"You're so uptight. It's summertime, there's a Strokes concert in a few hours two blocks away and you're studying English literature." He states, crossing his fingers on his chest.

"I'm going to study for the next forty minutes and then I'll stop and change for the concert." She tells him while making notes on a paper.

He smirks now. "Forty minutes, huh? Know what could be done, like, five times in forty minutes?"

She laughs now, looking up at him. "Presumptuous, aren't you?"

Puck drops his legs off of the bed. "Excuse me? Are you doubting my skills?" He's really annoyed now. Has she, like, _not_ slept with him yet?

"Absolutely not." She says, really amused now. "But I'm afraid your enormous ego is blinding you if you think you can make any woman have five orgasms in forty minutes."

Puck clenches his teeth and smiles at her, because right now she's got him pissed _and_ turned on. Well played, Berry.

She's still facing her books, a little smile on her lips. Puck gets closer to her on her chair and puts his arm on the table in front of her, closing the book she's reading. She closes her eyes and turns her head to him, opening them again. He smiles at her wickedly. She opens the book again and resumes her reading. Puck tries a different approach, nipping on her earlobe lightly. She closes her eyes again, her neck bending to the side. He goes on, kissing the spot above her ear and her cheek. "Stop it, Noah." She says, putting her hand on his chest. "I really need to study." She turns her head once again to the books.

Puck sighs into her hair. Figures she would make him go for the big guns. He never thought a girl could make his big guns be his brain instead of his bed skills. But, then again, she was not just any girl. He should have figured that out by now. "In which century were Geoffrey Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ written?"

Rachel glances at him before answering without hesitate. "14th century, starting in 1387."

" '_Jane Eyre' _was written by which Bronte sister?

"Charlotte, and please give me real questions."

Puck laughs softly into her neck and thinks for a second. "Poet W.B. Yeats wrote a poem called 'A Coat'. In the poem, the richly embroidered 'coat' is actually a metaphor for something much deeper he wishes to say. What is it that he wishes to express?"

Rachel grins. "That the poem he composed has been stolen by others, who present it to the world as their own." She turns to him, eyebrows up. "I think metaphors are important."

"You're acing this test, Berry." He tells her.

She doesn't waste another second before crashing her lips into his.

He totally proves her wrong about the forty minute thing, which is not something she is complaining about. And when she grabs his hand as they're walking to Radio City Music Hall, he can't help but think that maybe, after everything, they are still going to be alright.


End file.
